UFO Sighting Report

Date:

August, 15, 2009

Location:

Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States

Summary:

Staggered formation eight glowing orange lights. Each light paired with an adjacent light, equal distance between each pair of lights.

Date Reported:

10/22/2013 10:11:23 AM

Sighting Time:

9:30 PM

Day/Night:

Nighttime

No. of Witnesses:

5 or 6 people

Duration:

3 minutes

Appearance / Description of Object(s)

The "objects" were pulsating orange lights, reminiscent of aerial flares, but did not drift in the breeze or slowly descend as a flare would behave.
The intensity of the light was similar to that of the sun when viewed near sunset through cloud cover. bright enough to be obvious but nowhere near painfully intense.

Size of Object(s)

Size cannot be estimated with any accuracy. Hypothetically speaking, if the objects were a meter in diameter, the adjacent light in each pair would be approximately 6 to 8 meters from its counterpart.

Description of Area / Surroundings

The location was that of a large park in the suburbs on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, across the highway from the Gerald R. Ford international Airport.

Full Description & Details

Myself and a few of my closest friends were out participating in a local sporting event called Zombie of Zomb. The war-game consists of squads of "humans" armed with Nerf guns against unarmed "zombies". The events are typically held in Cascade Township Park opposite the Gerald R. Ford International Airport, usually between the time of 8pm and 11pm.

Around 9:30 to 9:45 PM my "squad" moved along the South Western perimeter of the park around, bordering the highway. My friend Jason looked North to see a group of eight pulsing orange lights, roughly 30 to 40 degrees above the horizon. He immediately got the attention of the others and pointed them out. The eight lights were organized in a staggered formation, four pairs of lights, each pair of lights were roughly the same distance apart, but all clustered together.

The lights remained perfectly stationary in their formation and hovered soundlessly for around three minutes before they disappeared one by one over the course of one minute.

Far across the highway searchlights began to shine over the airport. There was no report of UFO sightings or aircraft concerns the following day in any of the local news agencies. There were at least one hundred people in the park that evening, I cannot verify the number of people who may have witnessed the event other than the five or six members of my "squad".

I have reported this sighting to MUFON's database, although at the time of the report I incorrectly estimated the date of the sighting to be October 15th, rather than August 15th.

What follows is the report submitted to the MUFON website according to their questionnaire. I have also included the image I submitted recreating the sighting.

Cascade Township park. Myself and several close friends were participating in a outdoor NERF gun war-game called ZOMB, wherein 80-150+ people engage in a "zombie apocalypse" survival game.

2. What made you first notice the object?

Our "squad" was moving along the perimeter of the park closest to I-96. My friend Jason was the first to notice the lights and point them out. We looked NE across the park to see 8 orange glowing UFOs paired off in a staggered formation about 30-40 degrees above the horizon. As we looked across the highway at the Gerald Ford International Airport we saw searchlights moving across the sky over the airport.

3. What did you think the object was when you first noticed it?

My first impression based on the pulsating glow of the objects was that of aerial flares. However the night was breezy and if the objects had indeed been flares they would have been drifting in the wind.

4. Describe the object and its actions and motions in detail.

The 8 objects remained stationary, paired off at equal distance from each other in their staggered formation. No downward fall or drift with the wind currents. The objects were completely silent. (I don't know who else in the park that night may have noticed the phenomenon although it was clearly visible for at least 5 minutes.)

5. Describe your feelings, reactions and actions, during and after sighting the object.

I was the most excited, I kept asking everyone around me "Are you seeing this? Tell me you're seeing this." the sighting was verified by the 5 other people that made up our small 'squad' which included several of my closest friends. I was frustrated because I had brought a camera to the event but had left it locked in my car for fear of it being lost or damaged during the course of the game. (The image included is a approximation of the event superimposed on a screenshot from the Google road cam.)

6.How did you lose sight of the object?

The objects disappeared one by one over the course of 45 seconds to a minute, I personally witnessed at least two of the objects disappear as we continued moving along the perimeter of the park. By the time we came to a halt, the objects had all vanished.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I checked the MUFON database for sightings on the same date and found several sightings across the mid-west of the same phenomenon.

Can sighting be explained as any conventional man-made or natural object?

As I said, the light most closely resembled the APPEARANCE of aerial flares, but did not BEHAVE as aerial flare do.

Witness Background

I am currently 27 years old, (I was 23 at the time of this sighting). I am a college graduate with a bachelors degree in art and design. I am currently working as an English teacher in China to pay off my student loans.
Location listed below is my permanent address. Phone number is current

Views on UFOs, before and after sighting

I have always been open minded when it comes to the paranormal. I have had many unexplainable experiences in my life and I believe what I witness for myself and the experiences recounted by my closest friends. (Some of which I was lucky enough to share this particular sighting with.)
I wholeheartedly believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life,and while this sighting cannot be irrefutably labeled as proof of such life, I continue to read about UFO phenomena with great interest.

Other Comments

This is not my first UFO sighting. Twice I have seen black, equilateral triangular aircraft with white lights at each corner fly soundlessly South to North over my parent's home in mid-Michigan on perfectly clear and calm summer nights. Both of these sightings occurred before the one recounted in this report, but at the time I was unaware that agencies such as this existed to document these sightings.

In an unrelated (but no less interesting) note, following my grandfather's death at the beginning of this year, I received a box containing a number of declassified documents, schematics, and patent photocopies for projects that he worked on during the course of his time as an military-aerospace engineer. Including the radar systems aboard the F-117 stealth bomber and a laser weapon platform for shooting down ICBMs. There are several photos of him and his associates testing said platform in the desert outside the Air Force base in White Sands NM. Many of the projects he worked on include several described in Philip J. Corso's book 'The Day After Roswell' which allegedly were based on recovered UFO technology. Whenever I asked him his opinions on alien life, he maintained that it would be impossible for beings to travel here from other planets. But he was a good patriot and took any and all of his secrets to the grave.